Towards 3% R&D, Australia’s R&D slide – download our e-book

Through April and May, 2024 @AuManufacturing news published opinion crowd sourced from readers and members of the Australian Manufacturing Forum Linkedin group articulating the issues around a drastic slump in Australia’s innovation effort over the past 10 years, as measured by R&D.

Today we launch our e-book summarising 27 expert opinions and putting the case for a national innovation and industry policy to arrest the slide – download the e-book on the form below.

Every nation and every company must invest a portion of their income on innovating for the future – or they condemn themselves to irrelevance and economic decline – Australia has a target of spending 3% of GDP on R&D.

However R&D effort has fallen from 2.2 percent of GDP just over a decade ago to 1.68 percent now – well below the OECD average of 2.8 percent, not to mention leading countries like Korea, Israel and Switzerland with expenditures of up to five percent.

While Australia has been ‘lucky’ to date relying on iron ore, coal and gas – our industry mix is unsustainable if we are to remain a wealthy.

We asked readers what is going right and wrong with our innovation system, and how to fix it and we received around 40 substantial contributions – summarised in this special e-book. (Links refer to the original articles for the full versions.)

Australia urgently needs to organise and co-ordinate its innovation efforts, though there are some opportunities driving innovation such as defence, the energy transition and space.

The e-book Towards 3% R&D – Turbocharging Australia’s Innovation Effort below – is supported by our principal sponsor, public accounting, tax, consulting and business advisory BDO, and R&D tax incentive consultancy Michael Johnson Associates.

Editor’s note: downloading the e-book will add you to the mailing list for @AuManufacturing‘s newsletter – just unsubscribe if you do not wish to receive it.

Image: @AuManufacturing News